


last night's dream unravels

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: F/F, First Meetings, Language Barrier, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:14:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27091849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: Quynh had given up when Andy found her in the desert.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18
Collections: Fic In A Box





	last night's dream unravels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saiditallbefore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saiditallbefore/gifts).



> I hope my recipient enjoys the fic!
> 
> Title from "She's Saving Me" by the Indigo Girls.

Quynh didn't know how long she had been lying in the desert. It seemed as good as any other place to spend eternity. She had no idea how to get back to the homeland she had left, if indeed it still existed. After this latest village was attacked and burnt, and she woke up alone, again, it had seemed easier to walk into the desert and... give up, than trying to start over one more time.

She heard the hoof beats distantly. Her body, starved of water and food, had long ago drifted into a dream-like trance. She heard the hoofbeats halt, and supposed one of the raiders had come by and seen a body to loot. Unfortunate for the raider; the first party had taken anything she had of value off her corpse however long ago it had been.

Quynh opened her eyes only when the footsteps came very near. The sun blinded her for a moment. It shone from the back of the approaching figure, so that it took long moments for Quynh to focus on the details of her face and clothing.

"Oh," Quynh said, unsteadily, and heard her voice rasp from disuse. "You're the one from my dream."

The woman quirked an eyebrow sardonically and crouched. She offered a hand. Quynh stared at it for a moment before understanding; the woman wanted her to get up.

"No," Quynh said. "I'm going to lie here until I die." The woman stared at her flatly. "I am growing fond of this patch of earth, really," Quynh said. "The mountain ridge is a good friend of mine I'm happy."

The woman opened her mouth and said several words that Quynh did not understand, or even recognize.

"Oh," Quynh said. "Right. You don't understand me."

She had been dreaming about the woman for a hundred years, since her first death. She had eventually realized it was important somehow, but it hadn't occurred to her that the woman might be a flesh person she would meet some day. If she actually was.

"Maybe I'm already dead," Quynh said. "Then again, I assume I'll be able to talk to whoever awaits me beyond life."

The woman had been staring at Quynh patiently as she talked, but now she thrust her hand forward, pointedly, and said a few more words. The meaning was plain: Get up.

Quynh was apparently not going to be allowed to lie in the desert for the rest of eternity.

Slowly, she raised a hand, shaking faintly with weakness from hunger and thirst, and gripped the woman's fingers; and she pulled Quynh to her feet.

The next hurdle was the horse.

Quynh had seen them before, but mostly from a distance. The nomads who traded with the village she had left used horses to pull their wagons, and they rode them, especially when they raided. The village itself had donkeys. They looked similar but did not act similar. Quynh was familiar with donkeys, who were stubborn but strong and certainly gave the feeling of plotting murder, but weren't usually used as murder weapons by people.

Quynh wouldn't have told anyone she was a coward, but something in her turned inside out when she saw the horse over the ridge, and she stopped dead.

The woman was half supporting Quynh when she stumbled, so she noticed. She stopped, glancing back at her as though she thought Quynh might be hitting the end of her strength.

Devoid of any other way of making her point, and not sure what it was in the first place, Quynh pointed at the horse.

The woman gave her a confused look and shrugged, then said a few incomprehensible words. Yes, Quynh imagined her saying. It's a horse.

Of course the woman rode. Quynh had dreamed about her riding; had dreamed about her on the back of a much smaller cart, like the wagons stripped down for war, spear in hand--

She was breathing hard. The woman seemed to decide there was something wrong with her. She took Quynh's shoulders and lowered her back to the ground, unresisting, then strode off to the horse.

That's it? Quynh thought, indignant despite her fear. You came all this way and made me get off the ground, where I was perfectly happy to spend the rest of my life, and you're abandoning me because I stopped walking at the sight of your horse?

Then the woman reached into the bags on top of the horse and pulled out a waterskin.

Oh, Quynh thought, feeling foolish. Yes, of course.

She wet her lips with the water first, then drank a few swallows. Quynh didn't seem to get sick in the heat the way other people did, since the first time she had died, but it still probably was smart to be slow and careful. She didn't know how long it had been since she'd had water or food. A long time.

The woman watched her take small sips and seemed satisfied. Eventually she reached inside the shawl wrapped over her head and shoulders and took out a leather pouch and full of what Quynh recognized readily as travel food, even if the particular mix wasn't familiar: fat and dried meat formed into cakes. She could only take a few bites before she started to feel queasy. It was meant to be rich food so that you didn't have to carry much else. The woman took the pouch back after those few bites, not looking surprised. 

She must have dealt with death from hunger before, Quynh thought, and then she had to grip at the woman's shoulder for balance as dizziness swept her again.

She had realized without quite acknowledging it that this woman must be like her - _whatever_ Quynh herself was, now. That this woman _knew_ what Quynh was.

She had to learn to talk to her. 

Quynh had been speaking her first language without thinking, the language she thought in, along in the desert. Now she tried the language the village had typically spoken. "Do you speak this language?" 

The woman stared blankly at her. She must not be from around here, Quynh thought, then stifled a hysterical laugh. Of course she wasn't; if she had been, she and Quynh would have _met_. 

Quynh tried to remember the other languages she had learned in the entire human lifespan she had already lived, but her thoughts weren't coming clearly. Her body would not die, but it still could fail in a number of other ways, and she had badly misused it. She fumbled together words in the trade language they used with the nomads. "What about this one?" No response. 

There were other languages from years ago, from other villages, other pastoral groups, there was the language the Shang people spoke. Quynh tried them in turn, increasingly desperate, but the woman did not even seem to understand the question until she tried the words she knew of the Shang's language.

Finally the woman's eyebrow creaked up, and she twisted her lips before saying, in the same language, "No." 

No. She didn't speak it. Quynh flopped her head back to stare at the sky in frustration.

The woman patted her shoulder awkwardly, as though she wasn't sure it was the right thing to do. Maybe she had been alone all that times, too. Quynh had never dreamed about her having a family in the last century.

Then again, maybe she just thought Quynh was acting like a crazy person. It wouldn't be unreasonable.

The woman seemed to decide they had spent enough time there. She straightened, pulling Quynh upright again, and took the waterskin back too. (Quynh didn't object. She didn't have anything to carry it with; her belt had been looted before she woke up.)

Then, with the same insistent patience Quynh would have used with a frightened dog or stubborn donkey, she began to urge Quynh back towards the horse.

Quynh went. There didn't seem to be much point in resisting now. Close up, she eyed it. It was a different color from the ones the nomads around here used, a lighter red with hair the same shade instead of black. The equipment on it was carefully decorated and Quynh thought it was made of gold.

"You are better dressed than anyone from my village," Quynh told the horse. It didn't matter if she was talking about the last one or her homeland; it would be true either way.

The horse eyed her back. It didn't seem to use expressions the mules did, so she wasn't sure how it felt, but she did not get the impression the horse liked her any better than she liked it.

The woman had been watching them eye each other; she snorted now, and pointed at the horse and said a word.

Quynh repeated it, although she wasn't sure if it meant horse, or get on, or if it was the horse's name or something. Which reminded her to tap her chest and say, "Quynh."

The woman frowned at her, then repeated, "Kun."

"Quynh," she said, slowly.

"Quynh," the woman said, and shrugged and tapped her own chest. "Andy," she said.

"Andy," Quynh repeated, pleased to be getting somewhere.

Then the woman made it plain she wanted Quynh on the horse.

"I wish I could say that I'd walk," Quynh said plaintively. Talking to a woman - to Andy - who didn't speak her language was like talking to herself, but without the loneliness of actually talking to herself in the desert, because she had hope that she would _eventually_ understand Andy and Andy, her. "But I can feel my legs shaking, so I don't think I can. How?" She made her face and voice exaggerate the question in hopes it would convey the problem.

Andy sighed. Then she came over and took Quynh's hand, placing it in the hair on the horse's neck. Quynh gripped obediently. Andy pointed at her foot, then crouched and made a cup of her hands.

Right. Quynh swallowed. She wasn't at her most coordinated, but she could do this. She put her foot in Andy's hands and imagined that she was climbing onto a roof or a tree or even a donkey, and she got onto the horse.

The horse still did not seem impressed. Andy didn't look impressed either, but Quynh had no idea what she was doing wrong, and she had had a lot of very bad days in a row, so she ignored it. Andy sprang up behind her with none of Quynh's clumsy hesitation, reached around her for the reins, and signalled the horse to go forward.

They rode for a long time, or what seemed like a long time. Quynh, who had never been on a horse before, wasn't sure what she thought of the experience. She still felt like she was being tossed around in seawater with dizziness. Eventually she was too exhausted to be embarrassed about leaning back against Andy's chest. It wasn't a bad position to be in; Andy was muscled and steady. Quynh dozed on and off.

When she woke fully, Andy had halted the horse, and it was near dark. She blinked slowly until she identified the place as a campsite, with a tent of hide and an extinguished campfire. They had returned to Andy's base.

She clearly _wasn't_ from around here. Quynh did not recognize the type of tent, or the type of horse, or the type of equipment on the horse, or the travel food. Quynh herself was not particularly near her homeland anymore, but Andy hadn't had time to learn the trade language. Had she come searching for Quynh, and Quynh alone?

Nobody had particularly wanted Quynh since her last niece died. She tried not to get her hopes up now. Yes, she had dreamed of Andy for a century, but...

She didn't know what the but was. She didn't _know_ her, really, there was that; she had dreamed in flashes, little moments. Perhaps it was only that she had forgotten how to hope for something, after all of this time.

Andy placed her hands on Quynh's shoulders and straightened her back for her. Quynh sat up obediently. That seemed to be what Andy had been checking - maybe only that Quynh _could_ sit up - because she swung off the horse behind her, then offered her hands to Quynh again. She took them, and awkwardly slid and slithered off the horse's back to the reassuringly steady ground. Her legs ached, and when she tried to take a step they weaved and fumbled alarmingly.

"I missed you," she said to the earth. "I said I would never leave you and I should have kept that promise."

Andy couldn't have understood Quynh's words, but she gave an exasperated look to the sky at the tone alone.

Andy went to take care of the horse. Quynh sat down at the remains of the fire and thought about trying to get it lit again. She would have said she could light a fire in her sleep, but when she raised her hands they shook. She was also starving again. Her body could apparently repair her stomach that fast, but not her weak muscles.

Suddenly Andy was there, looming over her again. Quynh jumped, but she only dropped a blanket over her shoulders, and then set down the water skin and the pouch with food. Then she went off to take care of the horse again.

Horses were stupidly delicate, Quynh thought, staring blankly at the food for a moment before she managed to pick up the waterskin and drink out of it. She had seen the way the nomads fussed over their horses whenever they stopped near the village, worrying over their feet, walking them to cool them down slowly. The only big livestock they had kept back in her homeland were pigs. 

You tried touching a pig's feet to check if something was stuck in them, the pig would probably take your hand off. Some of the chickens would have, too.

She took another few bites of the travel cakes. Her stomach felt better. Her thoughts were starting to clear, too. She was coming alive, yet another time.

"I really hope you have some good explanations waiting when I can talk to you," she said in the general direction of where Andy was walking the horse.

They rode steadily northwest for days. After two, Quynh felt normal again, although it took several more to grow used to riding all day. Her muscles might heal faster from wear, but they didn't _learn_ faster, something she already knew. 

After the first day, she spent nearly every minute pointing at things and demanding Andy's words for them. She gave Andy her first language's words in return, since it wasn't as though they were going to use the language of the last village again.

The conversations they had were frustrating. "How many days?" Quynh said on the fifth, and pointed in the direction of travel.

Andy followed her gaze into the distance. Light from the sky reflected in her pale eyes. "Many," she said, and frowned. "Two tens and one. Twenty-one."

"Twenty-one," Quynh said, and wondered if that was how long Andy had taken to get here, or how long they had left to go. "Where?"

Andy looked at Quynh, then looked down at her feet, and shrugged. 

It got colder. It wasn't really winter yet, at least, not anywhere Quynh had ever lived, but she knew winter came earlier in the north, and they had been riding north. Andy had a coat made of fur stitched together with the pelt inside, but only one. They traded between wearing it and the blanket when they rode. They also began to sleep closer together in the tent at night. At first they inched together slowly, almost, Quynh thought, like shy adolescents who thought they weren't allowed. Neither of them seemed to want to break the barrier between them and risk rejection from this one person who might - might - be able to stay...

Then Quynh woke up shivering in the middle of the night, and thought, this is a stupid reason to die of cold, even if it won't last; and slid the last foot over to lie against Andy in the dark. A few moments of shuffling later and she lay with her back pressed to Andy's chest, the way they rode, with the blankets draped over them both.

They were riding through open steppelands, now, and perilously close to winter. Quynh wondered what would happen if they froze to death; would their bodies thaw through the same mysterious power that knitted together flesh, or would they be stuck like people carved out of ice until spring came? Andy seemed to know the territory better now; she didn't carefully follow or search for water sources and grazing, but traveled as though she knew where they could rest the horse and stop every day.

It didn't occur to Quynh to question that they had met no people until they were nearing the end of the twenty-one days Andy had predicted - if that had really been what she meant at all. Winter wasn't a good time to travel this area, even Quynh knew that, and there had been unrest lately in the area they'd come from, but still..

"Andy," Quynh said. They were sitting by the campfire. Quynh had shot a rabbit earlier while the horse rested, and it was roasting while Quynh repaired arrow shafts. She couldn't do anything about needing new arrow heads until they found someone to buy them from, which was what made her realize, finally, that it had been weeks since Andy had found her, weeks of travel, and not a single human had come nearby. 

Andy knew this territory, and they were near the end of her range of travel. There should have been people here, Andy's people, the people whose language Andy was teaching her.

Andy looked up. She was fixing a rip they had found in the tent that morning, but her hands went still. "Quynh," she said, and quirked an eyebrow.

Quynh fumbled for the vocabulary she had memorized in the last weeks. "Where," she said, and stopped; she had never learned the word for human in Andy's language. She pointed at herself, then Andy, then said helplessly, "People?" in her own.

Andy frowned at her but said a word. Quynh repeated it, then said, "Where are the people?" and pointed around them.

Andy's face went as blank as the wide steppeland sky. She looked away from Quynh, into the fire, and said, "No place."

"Andy," Quynh said more urgently. "Where are we going?"

"I don't know," Andy said.

They didn't talk for a while that evening, because they didn't have enough vocabulary in common to really argue. Quynh looked at the supplies Andy had brought with new eyes. She had thought, before, traveling gear, but the tent was old and patched, the bronze arrowheads battered and few, most of the sewing not exactly expert.

The horse gave Quynh pause. Yes, you could steal horses, but they were like chickens, you didn't keep just one horse alone. "You have," she said, and stopped, forming the sentence in her head. "You have more horses?"

"Yes," Andy allowed, distant eyes. 

"Where?" Quynh said, feeling steadier. If Andy had more horses elsewhere someone was watching them. Probably. Unless you set horses loose like pigs and rounded them up for slaughter. But horses were valuable, people stole them.

"Near," Andy said, but wouldn't explain more when Quynh tried to form a question.

It turned out there were people. But meeting them was not what Quynh had been hoping for, even if she couldn't quite say what she _had_ wanted.

It was late morning, and another day on horseback together, when Andy turned the horse suddenly from the slow, steady course they had been making. Quynh at first thought they were going to one of the sheltered watering spots, but they were moving too urgently for that; and then she spotted campfire smoke on the horizon. She sat up straight.

"Careful," Andy said in her ear. It was one of the words Quynh had learned first, from Andy talking to the horse. She gave an indignant look over her shoulder and Andy smiled.

They rode over a slight rise that had been invisible from a distance, and then they were looking down at a little hollow in the steppe into a campsite; and beyond it were arrayed the horses, surrounding the wagons as they grazed.

There weren't a lot of people there. They had wagons, like the nomads Quynh was familiar with, but the wagons were put together differently, painted different colors. Their clothing was different. They wore their hair differently, and something seemed subtly off to Quynh about the people but it took her a while to realize what it was: the men and the women were all dressed alike and wore their hair the same way, so that it was hard to tell them apart and the campsite seemed to be made up of all men or all women from a glance.

Andy was tense against Quynh's back. Quynh said, softly "Are you all right?"

"Yes," Andy said. Then, "No."

"Who are they?"

"Home," Andy said, but her voice and her body told a completely different story.

The two of them rode down on one horse to the camp. The people gathered in a knot to meet them; Quynh counted about nine or ten adults, a handful of children who wouldn't keep still to be counted. Andy dismounted fluidly and strode out to meet the person with the most gold jewelry on, who--

Knelt at Andy's feet and kissed her hands in greeting.

Oh, Quynh thought, and watched the others come up to do the same, and felt she knew what had caused Andy's distress.

Quynh had left her home when it became obvious she wasn't aging, when people started to be uncomfortable with her and ask questions. She had visited sometimes, but only until the family who knew her had died out. Andy obviously hadn't left. But nevertheless it was obvious why she had set out to find Quynh; with or without people around them, both of them were terribly alone.

Quynh wondered how long it had been for Andy. She wondered if the two of them were gods. She stood, uncomfortably outside the scene, until Andy turned and beckoned her.

Quynh went to Andy, who put her arm around her. The two of them were united in the face of these humans, these people of Andy's, bowing to them in the dust.

They didn't stay in the camp long. They shared a meal of roasted mountain sheep in sauce made of yoghurt, and fermented mare's milk that made Quynh's eyes water when she swigged it, to the laughter of their audience; and they slept, still pressed close together in the bedroll, in the shelter of a wagon that night. 

Andy left the horse, who was starting to look worn and tired from carrying two for weeks, and took four fresh horses with them; she said to Quynh that the group had five or six per adult, but she hadn't wanted to carry much looking for her. She took more supplies that were offered to them: more arrow heads, replacement clothing for Quynh, a second bow. They were offered more, but Andy refused it.

They didn't talk much until they had ridden away again the next morning. Andy had been stiff and inhumanly cold the whole time; Quynh had thought she was looking forward to seeing more people, but she found that in fact she was relieved to leave.

"You see my people," Andy said, at last, when they were resting the horses.

"No," Quynh said, and struggled with the tenses of the new language. "Not your people. Not for - long time."

"Years and years," Andy said, eyes on the horizon.

Quynh reached out to take her hand. Andy's fingers squeezed back, which gave her the reassurance to put her _other_ hand on Andy's jaw and turn her face from the distant horizon and the emptiness of the steppe to Quynh.

"I traveled from my people. Years and years," she echoed. "Now - you are my people. I am yours."

Andy's lips quirked up, slowly, and then they leaned together and kissed for the first time. 

It was long, and soft, but intent; they were both hungry for something, for someone, and they had found each other.

It also gave Quynh the courage to ask, "What are we?"

Andy shrugged, just like she had when Quynh asked where they were going, but she smiled instead of twisting her mouth. "I don't know."

"We find out," Quynh said, and squeezed her fingers. "Together."

"Together," echoed Andy.

**Author's Note:**

> I was mostly using the supplemental timeline here, which puts Andy and Quynh's meeting at ~seven hundred years before Alexander the Great takes Judea, after a century of dreams of each other; so this fic takes place roughly around 1000 BCE.


End file.
